Individuals are periodically charged expensive fees to have television, telephone, Internet, or other communications services provided to their homes. If these individuals could be formed into a network group, then the resulting economic leverage of these networked individuals create a better negotiation position for reducing the charges of these services. That is, an organization representing five-hundred or more service subscribers has more negotiating leverage than one subscriber.
As a result, the network community would have the prerogative of selecting television channels that are consistent with the religious, moral and ethical standards of the community. But if individual subscribers in the community insist on channels that may be offensive to the community, these channels can be encoded for the specific purchaser and the cost of service charged directly to the user. However, available neighborhood network technology has insufficient bandwidth to accommodate all the data associated with television, telephone and other communications services, making a neighborhood network impractical and expensive. Furthermore, such network systems do not accommodate varying data formats such as synchronous transmissions typical of television transmissions, and asynchronous transmission typical of computer data transmissions. For example, present network broadcasts of video are generally limited to uni-directional distribution
U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,054 issued to Patisaul et al, discloses a digital communication technique for a television communication system. The television channels are obtained and multiplexed, then transmitted through an LED to generate an encoded optical signal. The encoded signal is received by a photodetector which converts the optical signals into electrical signals. The signal is then demultiplexed into individual channels. A problem with such a device is that it is limited to distributing data and does not allow the addition of data by users. A further problem is that data is limited to synchronous transmissions.
Another dilemma that has been brought about due to the diversity of service providers is in the offices and apartment markets. Generally, these developments in old and new have become a target for the telecom companies. Upstart companies have been denied access to potential customers in these markets because landlords have existing service arrangements with the regional Bell companies.
Further, building owners do not desire dozens of start-up companies traipsing onto their properties. Should they be compelled to do so by regulators, the property owners consider this to fall nothing short of “forced entry.”
Such disputes have been coming before the Federal Communications Commission, which is hearing out both sides to decide whether to forbid building owners from turning away telecom providers. At stake is the ability to reach millions of customers in the nation's estimated 750,000 office buildings, and the one-third of the population who live in apartments.
The upstarts, known as competitive local-exchange carriers or CLECs, complain that competition is inhibited without their access inside the buildings. The need exists for these upstarts to wind wires through walls, tap into existing wiring or switches, or install antennae on roofs. Commonly, the upstarts' requests to enter buildings are often turned down, and even when allowed to come in, the negotiation process is prolonged or landlords demand excessive fees.
On the other hand, allowing access to the building is burdensome to the building owner. It has not been practical to allow access in view that, in Florida for example, there are over 250 suppliers, which would wreak havoc if there was a building with over 400 renters.
Attempts have been made to provide a data communications network infrastructure for allowing ready access by multiple service providers. An example has been with SONET, which requires optical signals travelling across the network to be converted into electrical signals at each network transit point, and then re-converted into optical signals for transport to the next transit point. The multiple conversions required in a SONET/SDH network increase network complexity and cost.
But SONET/SDH has been cumbersome. In the public network transmission infrastructure, the ability to manage data has resided in the SONET/SDH equipment that converts the data traffic from an electrical signal to an optical signal, which is then transmitted over an optical fiber. The optical fiber itself is only a physical transmission medium with no imbedded intelligence. As a result, moving data through the network involves the complex processes that add cost and make scaling difficult.
The SONET/SDH architecture has typically required a linear or ring-based network topology. The SONET/SDH architecture was originally designed to transport voice traffic, which contains far less data than present high-speed data services. Unlike voice traffic, which is generally characterized by slow growth and stable demand, rapid growth and unpredictable demand characterize data traffic. Data networks must be capable of being deployed cost-effectively and expanded rapidly.
But the SONET/SDH network architecture has not been sufficiently flexible to meet present data requirements. Generally expanding the capacity of a SONET/SDH network is time-consuming and requires significant capital investment by the service provider. There have been only two methods to expand a SONET/SDH network. The first option has been to increase the speed at which the network operates. Because SONET/SDH equipment was designed to operate at a specific speed, this option has required that all equipment on the SONET/SDH ring be replaced with higher speed devices on a concurrent basis. Accordingly, adding capacity to a SONET/SDH ring network has been a complex and time-consuming process.
The second option to expand a SONET/SDH ring network has been to construct new rings with new fiber or increase the capacity of each individual fiber on a ring through the utilization of DWDM technology, which can transform each fiber strand into as many as 100 parallel optical wavelengths. Under either approach, network complexity increases since each optical wavelength must be terminated by SONET/SDH equipment and the interconnection of multiple SONET/SDH rings will absorb some available network capacity
Thus, a need exists for products that are based on a common architecture that can accelerate the release of new products, and enable customers to upgrade their networks without significant new capital equipment or intrusion into the existing structures.